This is the first new CD of studio recordings in five years by John Stewart, one of the overlooked founders of the "Americana" genre, whose musical career encompasses more than 40 years and 40 albums. "Havana" features 1... more »4 memorable Stewart originals that ponder modern life and materialism ("Davey on the Internet," "Who Stole the Soul of Johnny Dreams"), mortality and existentialism ("Dogs in the Bed," "Starman"), personal and public heroes ("I Want to Be Elvis," "Turn of the Century [Diana]"), love ("Miracle Girl," "Cowboy in the Distance"), and life?s cosmic mysteries ("Star in the Black Sky Shining," "Rally Down the Night"). John tackles these issues with unquenched wonder and hard-won experience, a wry cynicism forged by reality but tempered with an optimism based on faith in the individual. The title song expresses John?s frustration at his inability to visit the forbidden Cuba. The CD?s one borrowed composition is John?s version of the standard "Lucky Old Sun," a 1949 hit for Frankie Laine also recorded by Frank Sinatra, Willie Nelson, Jerry Lee Lewis and many others. The CD was produced and mixed by John, who also plays most of the instruments (guitars, banjo, bass, harmonica, keyboards, percussion). His accompanists include wife Buffy Ford Stewart on harmonies and percussion (her backing vocals on "Turn of the Century" make one hunger for the song?s chorus) and longtime sideman John Hoke on drums and percussion. Rich, bright layers of ringing guitars, propulsive rhythms, dollops of banjo, lyrics ranging from thoughtful to playful, and John?s weathered voice of experience add up to a mature, haunting (but still rocking) high water mark in his lengthy career.« less
This is the first new CD of studio recordings in five years by John Stewart, one of the overlooked founders of the "Americana" genre, whose musical career encompasses more than 40 years and 40 albums. "Havana" features 14 memorable Stewart originals that ponder modern life and materialism ("Davey on the Internet," "Who Stole the Soul of Johnny Dreams"), mortality and existentialism ("Dogs in the Bed," "Starman"), personal and public heroes ("I Want to Be Elvis," "Turn of the Century [Diana]"), love ("Miracle Girl," "Cowboy in the Distance"), and life?s cosmic mysteries ("Star in the Black Sky Shining," "Rally Down the Night"). John tackles these issues with unquenched wonder and hard-won experience, a wry cynicism forged by reality but tempered with an optimism based on faith in the individual. The title song expresses John?s frustration at his inability to visit the forbidden Cuba. The CD?s one borrowed composition is John?s version of the standard "Lucky Old Sun," a 1949 hit for Frankie Laine also recorded by Frank Sinatra, Willie Nelson, Jerry Lee Lewis and many others. The CD was produced and mixed by John, who also plays most of the instruments (guitars, banjo, bass, harmonica, keyboards, percussion). His accompanists include wife Buffy Ford Stewart on harmonies and percussion (her backing vocals on "Turn of the Century" make one hunger for the song?s chorus) and longtime sideman John Hoke on drums and percussion. Rich, bright layers of ringing guitars, propulsive rhythms, dollops of banjo, lyrics ranging from thoughtful to playful, and John?s weathered voice of experience add up to a mature, haunting (but still rocking) high water mark in his lengthy career.
CD Reviews
Dark America
Jerome Clark | Canby, Minnesota | 08/30/2003
(5 out of 5 stars)
"It has been, most informed observers would agree, a long, dry spell for John Stewart, whose music only recently came back to mind when I happened to purchase a retrospective (Earth Rider, documenting what an Australian label judges to have been Stewart's best solo work up till 1979). Before that, I'd heard just enough of some less than inspired albums to think of him, to the extent that I thought of him at all, as no more than another exhausted talent. So the new album surprises, even startles, with its consistent brilliance. Havana is a long way from the young's man romantic American visions of the 1970s classics California Bloodlines and Willard. This is an aging man's dark meditations on a Bush-era America in spiritual free fall. It's a geezer voice, haunted and haunter, disturbed and disturbing, singing and reciting in a sonic atmosphere of stark, 21st-Century folk music. More sorrowful than angry, Stewart isn't Richard Thompson, but the mood is the same, and Havana measures up to Thompson's best work, minus the lashing humor. The key song is "Waiting for Castro to Die," on one level a stunning evocation of the psychic deadening that comes from living too long in a closed, static state, on another a clear-eyed look at the closing circle of cruel time and the faint hope of something beyond a vacuous, barely endurable present. (Predictably, the Stalinists who still lurk in the more fossilized corners of the folk realm have blanched at this not-reverent use of the aging tyrant. Not to his credit, liner-note writer Tom DeLisle offers them a semi-apology.) Another particularly striking moment comes in "Rally Down the Night," inspired -- according to the liner notes -- by a UFO sighting; few songs speak so well to the enigmas that gnaw at us from our grain of sand's perspective on the cosmic ocean. "Cowboy in the Distance" sounds a little like one of California Bloodlines' slower, more reflective songs, only older and wiser. "One-Eyed Joe," the closest of anything here to a more traditional kind of folk, nonetheless manages to reinvent the country-blues form for a new time and place. Stewart is at the peak of powers in this deep, affecting recording, as good as any Americana release that's appeared so far this year. No best-of-2003 list that matters will be without it."
Still the Best
Robert B. Wellner Jr | Gaithersburg, MD | 10/23/2003
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Compared to other things I've heard lately, I'd give this album 10 stars, if possible. The voice fits the music, which is grand. The images are extremely compelling. Stewart always has a strong grip on the human condition, and his songs are mature and honest."
A Music Fan...You just don't get it!
D. Hoover | 01/22/2005
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Don't give any mind to the negitive reviews of this CD. John Stewart still writes and sings from the heart. People slamming this CD don't understand John Stewart or his music, they also wouldn't Tom Waits. If you KNOW John Stewart music you will enjoy Havana."
There's a Reaon Why the Call Him a Legend
P. Newcomb | Southern California | 03/01/2005
(5 out of 5 stars)
"John Stewart can still pen a lyric better than 99.99% of the songwriters out there. He has the ability to take simple concepts and turn it into profundity. Star in the Black Sky Shinning is a perfect example. Only someone with pure talent, ability and instictively heart wrenching phrasing can turn out a CD like this. The vioce may have changed, but that doesn't detract from this CD, but rather adds to it."
Track Listings (15) - Disc #1